Layla and other assorted love songs

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I have to add that the unreleased surround mix, especially the DTS, is excellent, with plenty of instrumentation going on in the rear speakers including some bits that I don't remember from but which were probably just virtually inaudible in the stereo mix. Whitlock also contributed "Thorn Tree in the Garden", while Clapton brought "I Am Yours" (from a poem by Nizami) and "Layla" (with a coda credited to Jim Gordon).

It was there that they saw "La Fille au Bouquet" (Girl with bouquet), the painting by Émile-Théodore Frandsen de Shomberg which became the cover of Layla. Surround Sound DVD of the album, a newly remastered In Concert two-CD set, a double LP version of the album, a hardcover book, and a number of other extras. On the down side the CDs and DVD slip in and out of little cardboard slots with difficulty and a fair risk of scratching with repeated use. The miscellany disc is predictably mixed (and indeed sometimes remixed), though the Johnny Cash Show appearances are marked by some zip.Of course, it wouldn't be fair to put all the glory on Clapton's shoulders here: as I said above, this is one of these albums that honor the word "supergroup" better than any other around, where they are generally just a collection of names. Of these numbers, which have been newly mixed for this reissue by their original engineer Andy Johns, the stop-gap riffery of Willie Dixon's 'Evil' and the anthemic 'Got To Get Better In A Little While' are the highlights from these aborted sessions (Bobby Whitlock has laid down new vocal and keyboard tracks for the latter incidentally, though his voice seems unchanged over the last 40 years and it blends in well). If you want the history, Eric was madly in love with his best mate's wife Patti Boyd Harrison, and to give him credit, he finally bagged her. Concerned that the press and the public were unaware of Clapton's involvement, Atco and Polydor distributed badges reading "Derek is Eric".

In Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981), Christgau dubbed it "Clapton's most carefully conceived recording", while admiring the album's "relaxed shuffle and simple rock and roll" and Clapton's "generally warm" singing. Bobby Whitlock revealed in an interview that while they were staying at Emile Frandsen's house in France in August 1970, he took them to his father's studio just after they had made a mess by having an egg fight. I mean, you have an insane amount of talent in here: Eric Clapton and Duane Allman, Bobby Whitlock, Jim Gordon and Carl Radle, tight as hell and delivering a collection of really inspired own compositions here (penned mainly by Clapton and Whitlock) like "I Looked Away", "Bell Bottom Blues", "Anyday", "Tell The Truth" or the title song (here displayed in its original electric and schizophrenic glory, rather than the semi-skimmed version in "Unplugged" that made it so widely known later in the nineties), plus a fistful of the finest blues standards covers thrown in for good measure, like Billy Myles' "Have You Ever Loved A Woman" (one of my favourite blues ever, here graced with a to-die-for guitar jam between Clapton and Allman) or Hendrix's "Little Wing". From April 1970, the two spent weeks writing a number of songs "just to have something to play", as Whitlock put it. J. Cale recorded The Road to Escondido, on which Allman Brothers guitarist Derek Trucks played guitar.As the tour progressed the set changed, with the first half of the show consisting entirely of songs from Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs and culminating in "Layla". The album's five covers included the blues standards " Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" ( Jimmy Cox), " Key to the Highway" (Charles Segar, Willie Broonzy), and " Have You Ever Loved a Woman" ( Billy Myles), a version of Jimi Hendrix's " Little Wing", and an up-tempo take on Chuck Willis's doo-wop ballad " It's Too Late".

On 28 August, with Allman contributing slide, [13] the song was recorded as a long and slow instrumental jam. The MFSL version was significantly cleaner than the first CD releases, but also removed some of " Wall of Sound"-like technique that was added during mastering for vinyl. AllMusic editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine praised Allman's slide guitar work for "push[ing] Clapton to new heights" and stated, "what really makes Layla such a powerful record is that Clapton, ignoring the traditions that occasionally painted him into a corner, simply tears through these songs with burning, intense emotion. Please, note this deluxe is a repress of the 40th Anniversary 2CD deluxe, so, it doesn’t feature anything new. Writing in Melody Maker, Roy Hollingworth opined that the songs ranged "from the magnificent to a few lengths of complete boredom", and specified: "We have Hendrix's 'Little Wing' played with such spreading beauty that Jimi would surely have clapped till his hands bled, and then we have 'I Am Yours' … a bossa that novas in pitiful directions.Nor does the new yellow box with stick-on guitar artwork match the black and gold embossed box with reproduction LP artwork on the lid of the 20th Anniversary Edition. Eric Clapton immediately spotted a likeness between the blonde-haired woman it depicted and Pattie Boyd. When Clapton learned of this he insisted on going to see their show, saying, "You mean that guy who plays on the back of ( Wilson Pickett's) 'Hey Jude'?

Derek and the Dominos went on tour to support Layla and performances from the October–December 1970 US tour were released in January 1973 on In Concert. Still, back on the up-side you do get 6 tracks from the 2cd album sessions plus some other live material from TV shows etc. Dowd later rued the difficulty of getting airplay for the songs on US radio, [23] while Shapiro attributes its lack of success in Britain to minimal promotion by Polydor and what he terms "the unrelenting and monotonous Press litany of a post-Cream withdrawal syndrome".Clapton also insisted that the image be used unadorned on the ''Layla'' sleeve, with no text added to give either the band's name or the title of the album.